native perspectives on earth's most isolated archipelago

Gestating Change – a Botanist’s View

It made me cry. Katie Kamelamela articulates her experience of the recent ‘Aha, a four week long constitutional convention process for Native Hawaiians last month. Approximately 150 Native Hawaiians created a fifteen page constitution based on their understanding of our history. As groundbreaking as that accomplishment was, the process itself was one of deep transformation for Kamelamela (see video at about 34:00.) To come away with profound insight into her own being-a way forward as a leader (not something she sought,) recognizing that above all, unity among Hawaiians is the foundation of sovereignty-fully warrants the fraught with hakakā genesis of this ‘Aha. Kamelamela’s message of acceptance and courageous embrace of change adds a new stanza to Meleanna Meyer‘s kāhea so beautifully presented last fall.

I thank the Grassroots Institute of Hawaii , and likeminded, for their steadfast efforts to induce Hawaiians to play by rules foisted on our ancestors in a series of opportunistic, unlawful and cruelly hypocritical events. It is the pain of that injustice gestating over a century, now manifest as kuakoko, which is birthing something of such pure beauty I am moved to tears.